Student Achievements
Engineering Alum Finds Success as Researcher at VAI
March 17, 2014
A group of students and faculty at Grand Valley State University have been working with Van Andel Institute to develop new methods to further a growing medical field that aims to improve early detection of cancer and disease.
A group of four Grand Valley students and graduates, and Anthony Chang from VAI, presented three years worth of research at the World Molecular Imaging Congress, one of the largest meetings in the medical imaging field, September 18-21 in Savannah, Georgia.
Chang and a group of Grand Valley graduate students, including Anderson Peck, helped form the research lab at VAI three years ago.
Peck, who was in the first class of the master’s program in 2010, now works at VAI as a full-time researcher. “VAI is the only place in Michigan that’s developing these new techniques, and we’re right here in West Michigan. We have a few new techniques, and hope they’ll be used in the future,” said Peck.
Chang said: “We have a strong presence in the imaging research field, which before, only happened at really big universities. We’re putting Grand Valley and Grand Rapids on the map in this area. VAI and our students are helping develop new techniques and concepts that could save lives."
Located in the Seymour and Esther Padnos College of Engineering and Computing, the Master’s of Science in Biomedical Engineering program was established in 2010 and focuses on medical device design and development.